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So, to explain things (like I always do), Dallas wrote me an email, with the proposal that, to finish off the November chunk of his 365 blog, I write about my favorite movie of all time. Dallas did a fine job writing about his favorite films, so I'll try to catch up a little bit. That being said, is it alright if I've only seen my favorite film once?
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I mean, you can't be a freak about every movie you see. It helps to be, but sometimes circumstances get in the way of your obsessions - like the fact that you borrowed the DVD, and you can't find it anywhere to buy. Or, you got it from the library, and you can't find it anywhere to buy. Or, your friend borrowed it from the library, and... you get it.
This is a problem with the great Criterion Collection. They put out the coolest movies, and then put them out of print after a year or less. Sure, it enhances sales, makes the DVDs collectable, and clears the way for other important Criterion releases. But I want one of them, and damnit, I wish it were still in print. Of course, the only Criterion edition of the film I want came bundled with four other films by the same director. That's the Criterion way - and bless them for it. I need to find that box set.
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And this is where Jeremy comes into the story. He took it apon himself to try and get me into serious film. He made a valiant attempt, and showed me a lot of great movies. But, yet again, I lost interest, like I always do with films - I'm ultimately impatient with anything that takes time, unless I have control over the outcome.
A couple of years ago, I told my friends that I wanted to become a film director. Seriously - I wanted to buy a Bolex reflex 16mm movie camera and some film stock and try my hand at filmmaking. My friends accepted it, but asked me what inspired me to become a film director - as my dislike for watching movies was legendary, and is still. "Why would you want to make films, if you don't like watching them?" I explained that I would make the kind of movies that I liked to watch, which worked for a while.
Eventually, my want to get into filmmaking was eclipsed by another attempt to write and record my (third) solo album and, when that divebombed and exploded, I took another swing at photography and fell in love again. That's where I am now, but I'm still enchanted by film, and maybe, one day, I'll get that Bolex and make something that I couldn't mind watching myself.
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Anyway, Jeremy came into play because I told him that if I was to start shooting films, I would like to at least *technically* know what I liked and what I didn't, and how it fit into film history. (I knew the bare bones of it, but too much knowledge of a creative subject is never a bad thing.) Jeremy, like the friend that he is, ran off to the library and got a selection of films for me to watch. Oddly enough, my favorite film was in that first batch, in a lovely Criterion edition that I would love to be able to find now. It's directed by John Cassavetes, and it's called Faces.
You can tell if I like a film or not. If I like a film, I'm not fidgeting around, looking for a clock, or drinking too much Coke. If a film can make me turn off the outside world and give all of my attention to it, it's a good film to me. Otherwise, I'm always sitting there, wondering how long the movie is, and wondering what else I could do with the time I'm wasting. Faces wasn't one of those - my world dropped away when I saw it, even though it's not a movie you can disappear into.
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For one, it's an amazingly uncomfortable film. It mainly deals with the death of marriage, in the most flamboyant and alcohol-soaked enviroment in recent times - late 1960s Los Angeles. The husband character is an advertising executive; his wife has little to do except sit around the house and smoke two packs of cigarettes a day. The contrast between the "good life" - money, a ranch-style home with copious furnishings, and liquor, plenty of liquor - and actually living it is apparent from the beginning of the film. Cassavetes doesn't like giving you space, or dialog that flows off of tongues - being shot on super-grainy 16mm black-and-white film, and probably with a skeleton crew, Cassavetes would direct his actors to put their own spin on their characters. What emerges is a film with incredibly realistic acting, and it makes most of the scenes extremely hard to watch. Cassavetes used this technique extensively; he knew what power it put into his films.
When their marriage is destroyed by debauchery, caused by the ultimately hollow life in which they live, the husband and wife seperate for a night and, left to their own devices, completely walk away from their situation, looking for better things. Mentally, however, they can't unlearn their ways: the husband runs to a young blonde "entertainer", with whom he knows he will never foster a healthy relationship; the wife goes out to the Whisky a Go-Go with all of her shallow girlfriends, and hooks up with a young beatnik who allows her to overdose on sleeping pills. The film closes with the realization that pain and divorce are a normal thing in life; backs are stabbed every day, and it's not always forgiven. Yet, the couples' seperation needed to happen; the last scene, where they're sitting on the stairs, smoking cigarettes and looking rough after their respective nights out, is remarkably free of the choking tension that runs through the rest of the film. They're victims of their times, and content with it; even though their marriage is over, life has only changed a little bit, perhaps for the better.
When I finished it, I felt like I understood life a little better. It was also exactly my type of film: brutally honest, "real" (I hate it when people use that word to describe films, but it works here), and I believe it typifies the era it was made in. It held me enchanted from the opening scene to the last.
Most of all, though, when I said that I would only make films that I would want to watch, Faces is exactly that. I doubt I could match a tenth of the originality of this film, but hey, there's nothing wrong with trying.
Inspiration and life lessons, mixed up in a perfectly preserved time capsule: this is why Faces is probably my favorite film. And yes, I've only seen it once.
(Shane Guy writes External on a semi-permanent basis. He lives in Riverview, Florida with mountains of dust and no cats.)
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